Sellers/Buyers Roll Call 7

[MrBobLobLaw]

Stressed vendors and buyers alike: assemble here to moan about bloody solicitors!

Feel free to join at any point

I think £4k for 2 people is high( we live in SW London), do you move far? We are quoted for boxes sending to us and we pack as much as we could and the removers help with the rest for 6 hours. We do have couple of large garden items though, I am thinking of giving them away rather than paying for removals, they arent worth £3k.

£4k does seem steep.

I've been quoted, provisionally, £3k for a 3 bed house and allllll the beds and stuff.

@Newhome321 yes I guess, we are moving from Bucks to Suffolk... but the man who wouldn’t even quote had moved someone to Scotland day before!

You know that’s true, none of our furniture ads up to £4K maybe I’ll get another skip and dump it all, and put all our clothes in black bags and squash them into the car 😆

And we dont unpack as we will be soon be moving to a rented property while the work is on. But its all fantasy until the contract exchanged. I am most worried about porting our internet connection as both of us logging from home and we have to go through compliance procedure to have any new online connection set up( wont be able to use internet connection outside home due to restriction from work compliance permission).

Haha Karcheer, we indeed will tell the children to walk to the new house while we have stuffs( fragile, things we dont trust removers handling etc) squashed in our car.

Insane amount for removals! I recently paid 1500 to move a 3.5 bed house of 140m2. Admittedly a very short distance but that isnt where your costs accumulate. That included a fairly full shed. They were excellent.this is sw london surrey borders. Didnt include packing but did include packing materials.

House on the market. Lots of viewings in one day but only one rubbish (now non procedable) offer. This is meant to be the easy bit of the thing, forever house waiting but not for long!

We haven’t even thought about removals yet. Different situation though as we don’t have to clear out of current accommodation and into new house all in one day, as moving out of tied accommodation, there can be overlap. I do have some big stuff - sofa, beds x 2, fridge, bookcase/shelving units, washing machine - that I’d need least a 2-strong-men-and-a-van team to shift for me. But most stuff - clothes, boxes, small furniture items - are carryable by anyone so I’m more tempted to hire our own enterprise/zipcar van for that and rope in some friends/family. V good point about value of the item vs cost to move it. We’ll probably leave some things here (employer can re-use whatever furniture we don’t take).

Anyway all motoring now here, searches paid for, survey paid for, mortgage applied for. All out of our hands now.

Ive just text my little brother to see if he fancies doing it with some mates, id rather give them some cash than be taken the mickey out of tbh! loads of them are furloughed... potentially to be made redundant so... we will see...

Not too worried about removals, we'll wing it. (Moved 7 times in 9 years!) DH has a C+E licence and all appliances are integral so I think we can wing it.

Also got to move twice, back into rented until the house is ready.

you know, its not so much the cost, it's more i think they are taking the pee, there really isn't that much stuff.

We paid £1400 about 8 years ago to move over 150 miles, that was a 3 bed house to a 3 bed house (small). I heard a few years ago the removals companies charge the military a day rate of about £1700 (not sure how that works with varying house sizes and distances etc). They'd always try to drag a job out as navy days as they could...tried making a 3 mile job a 2 day job....

@notheragain4 I've moved a few times over the years and i can never remember it being this much. Its actually really annoyed me. I wonder if its because they have to wear ppe/use single use boxes etc...

@Karcheer - we are moving a very full 4 bed plus all appliances and workshop/garage and it's costing us £1800 - only moving 10 miles away but its a whole load of crap to move! 4K seems excessive - are theses big companies or local man with a van type?

Got some searches stuff back already - you really do wonder what you’re paying for - they’ve clearly just stuck the postcode into a search engine and pressed print. Maybe a few different search engines if I’m being charitable .

@Lemonylemony

Got some searches stuff back already - you really do wonder what you’re paying for - they’ve clearly just stuck the postcode into a search engine and pressed print. Maybe a few different search engines if I’m being charitable .

I know and they cost a lot! and how long can that seriously take to do? Craziness!

Environmental searches and water/drainage searches can normally be obtained very quickly, little more than entering a property address on a search provider platform.

Local searches obtained via the local authority are the ones that can take time, and can vary wildly in speed from one local authority to another.

@Lemonylemony you're paying for comfort, peace of mind and the ability to rely on the searcher's PI cover if something that ought to be disclosed isn't and you suffer a potentially significant loss as a result.

As a property lawyer I didn't appreciate how much work goes in to preparing searches (especially local authority searches or searches against unregistered titles) until I had to question one, albeit some properties are more complex and involved than others. Don't know what searches are like in England but in Scotland I'd say they're pretty good value for money.

Agreed @Needanotherholiday

What's the total cost of searches for most buyers, £3-400 maybe £500 tops? That doesn't seem a lot to me, in comparison to the price of the property.

Not going well our end. Barrett chasing, buyer seemingly no further toward, still not bothered to action solicitors, estate agents not returning my call.

That sounds stressful and depressing in equal measure 😭.

We instructed the solicitor today in anticipation for Friday's call for the mortgage application. The DIP is through, and they provisionally accepted us for 50k more than we wanted, we have zero credit commitments other than mobile phones, and neither us have to pay to run a car (company cars) should be okay right?

I'd like to give you folks some hope because I genuinely never thought this day would come. After a painful separation I exhcanged and completed today on my new house

I'm lying in my new bedroom, bloody well freaking out how I am responsible for this place all alone. But I am very happy. I've had COVID; Lawyers!: unadopted land; 4 weeks of being homeless; 2 weeks of running a hard job from a 4g connection; 4 weeks of driving my children on a 200 mile round trip every 4 days.

It's over. That's it. Failing some catastrophe I am not moving for another 10+ years please please be quiet ok neighbours, please....

@Whathewhatnow im so pleased for you ! I hope you enjoy settling into your new home - you deserve it x

Congratulations whatthewhatnow, that sounds like bliss

@Whathewhatnow congratulations and enjoy it